Madame Speaker, today I rise to speak out against the drastic cuts proposed to the SNAP program, a lifeline that millions of Americans rely on.

The Farm bill being debated today would cut over $20 billion over 10 years from SNAP, a program that ensures that children, seniors and families struggling to make ends meet, don’t have to go without food. The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that these cuts would leave 2 million Americans without essential food assistance and cut 200,000 children from the school lunch program.

Food pantries in all corners of my district tell me that they are already struggling to keep up with need. The Interfaith Food Pantry in Aurora, Illinois provides food assistance to 750 families each week – 40 percent of those families also get SNAP benefits which are unfortunately insufficient to meet their food needs.

If these SNAP cuts are implemented, more families will be forced to turn to volunteer run pantries which are already stretched dangerously thin, and many people will have nowhere to turn.

Madame Speaker, there is a long list of federal programs for which the benefits are uncertain, or for which the benefits are certain to be delivered to narrow groups for which the need is unclear. SNAP is not one of these, and I urge my colleagues to reconsider these drastic cuts. I yield back.